Dateline: October 9, 2007, 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
The Toronto Maple Leafs were, for all intents and purposes, eliminated from playoff contention this evening, after suffering a 7-1 drubbing at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes.
Seriously. I caught the last two periods on Sportsnet (Leafs region) and it was Ugly. The Leafs, playing at home, allowed seven ‘Canes goals by seven different players. And the scary thing is – it wasn’t goalie Vesa Toskala’s fault. He played relatively well, save for an inexcusable failure to hug the post on Eric Staal’s goal late in the third. It was the players in front of him that didn’t show up tonight. And considering the off-ice news of the past couple days, this was a night where you’d expect a real team to show up with their A game.
Normally I wouldn’t blog about the Leafs seeing how much overplay they already get in the hockey media (then again, one should be hesistant to complain about any “excessive” hockey coverage in an age where ESPN doesn’t even show highlights and the Joe Louis Arena doesn’t sell out anymore). But since this was the only game on the sched this evening, I figured I’d throw in my 2 cents (Canadian, not US, as it’s worth more).
